The concepts of love in Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems (INTRODUCTION)

The concepts of love in Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems (INTRODUCTION)

                                       Written by Ari Julianto


                                                                   1.1 Background of the Study

Rumi and Gibran

Through language, as the media for communication, people can express their feelings or ideas about something to the receiver. Meanwhile, movie, novel, short story, play, poetry or poem can be the medium for expressing the experience, feeling or idea. Poetry or poem is the literary work that can be formed from the writer’s feeling, observation, or experience. In poem, a poet asks readers to participate in understanding the meaning or even their world. The language used in poem can be far from the ordinary words and the words can be explained more than one meaning. In order to understand the meaning of words, the reader should read the whole content of what a poem says as Arp (2005: 25) says.

In this research, poem becomes an object of the study. The reason is that poem is one of literary works which sometimes contains various themes of human senses and feelings, such as sadness, happiness, poverty, depression, hate or love etc. Childs and Roger (2006: 181) state that the terms ‘poem’, ‘poetry’, ‘poetic’ and ‘poetics’ seem to be necessarily frequent in critical writing but various in their senses. The commonest use of ‘poem’ is ‘any composition in verse’: Verse referring to a set of technical conventions for regulating a composition by line-length, for making the line part of the expressive form, and ‘poem’ claiming to be a genre-term subsuming any production which utilizes that convention.

Along with the ‘love’ which is used in many poems as the themes, the writer chose ‘love’ as the main topic. The reason is that love comes in many forms including in literature works. There is love for God, love between a parent and child, brothers and sisters, or love given by a person to an animal or object. It basically comes down to the fact that everyone inevitably either loves something or someone. Humans create love out of strong, personal bonds. Love gives us the assurance that we are not alone in the world. In a larger aspect, love runs the world around us. People love money and that creates a drive for them to work harder and run businesses. On a smaller scale, we survive as children because of the love our parents or caregivers provide for us. Love is (usually) how we are all created in the first place, so technically we wouldn't be here without it.

Rubin (1970: 265) states that love is generally regarded to be the deepest and most meaningful of sentiments. It has occupied a preeminent position in the art and literature of every age, and it is presumably experienced, at least occasionally, by the vast majority of people. In Western culture, moreover, the association between love and marriage gives it a unique status as a link between the individual and the structure of society.

As mentioned above that love comes in many forms including in literature works, poets express their feelings of love in poems. There are many famous love poets in literature world such as Robert Browning, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Nizar Qabban, Ibn Al Farid, Jalalluddin Rumi, Khalil Gibran and many other poets whose works until now are still remembered by romantic poem lovers. The two famous poets as mentioned above that is Jalaluddin Rumi, Khalil Gibran are considered as the most influence poets in the world.

The writer chose Jalalluddin Rumi and Khalil Gibran by considering that first Khalil Gibran is a major pioneer of modern Arabic literature, as the best selling American poet of the twentieth century, and as a Middle Eastern modernist whose intellectual life is documented in meticulous detail. Meanwhile Rumi’s teaching of peace and tolerance has appealed to men and women of all sects and creeds, and continues to draw followers from all parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim world.

Second, Gibran’s romanticism was a health-restoring revival of the instinctual life in contradistinction to the constraints that sought to sublimate human freedom in the united name of social tradition or religious conformity; in many ways his rebellion was akin to the beginnings of Romanticism in England a century earlier, when Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelley strove to explore the literature of internalized quest and Promethean aspiration. Meanwhile, as a teacher and a mystic, Rumi’s doctrine advocates tolerance, reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love, looking with the same eye on Muslims, Jews, Christians and others alike. Today, this message of love, peace and friendship finds strong resonation in people’s hearts.

Bushrui and Jenkins (2008: 1) state that as an oriental who wrote Gibran’s most celebrated work in the major language of the Western world, Gibran’s style and philosophy is characteristic of the East, and of the Arab in particular. His constant inspiration was his own heritage, which colored his English and exercised an inescapable hold over his mind, its insistence being upon the wholeness of visionary experience and the perpetual availability of another realm of being. In all his work he expressed the deep-felt desire of men and women for a kind of spiritual life that renders the material world meaningful and imbues it with dignity.

Eydin (2004: 3) writes that Rumi’s message was to clarify the relation of human beings to our Creator, and our relation to others and our fellow beings. Even in his day, Rumi was sought out by merchants and king, devout worshippers and rebellious seekers, famous scholars and common peasants, men and women.

By considering the importance of knowing the love message in the poems of Khalil Gibran and Jalalluddin, the writer chose the topic of love in the poems of these two poets. This research aims to narrow the field of "love" and enable distinction between the two poets who have experienced expanded consciousness and the two poets who display random love tendencies. Through a comparative study of these two prominent poets, the thesis falls on psychological approach. These points of association are brought together to create a new framework suitable for the examination of similar poets from various religious and literary traditions.

1.2 Problem Identification
The problem of this study focuses on
1.  The concepts of love in Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems,
2. The differences between Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems in the concepts of love,
3. The similarities between Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems in the concepts of love.

1.3 Research Objective
The objectives of the study is aimed 
1.  to describe the concepts of love in Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems,
2.  to find out the differences between Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems in the concept of love,
3. to find out the similarities between Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi’s poems in the concept of love.

1.4 Scope of the Study
This thesis examines the concepts of love which is generally regarded to be the deepest and most meaningful of sentiments. It has occupied a preeminent position in the art and literature of every age, and it is presumably experienced, at least occasionally, by the vast majority of people. The writer focuses the concepts of love in love and mystical poems of Khalil Gibran and Jalalludin Rumi.

1.5 Significance
All the findings are expected to meet the problems of identification such as:
1.    to give the description of concepts of love in the poems,
2.    to show all the readers the differences and the similarities of the concept of love based on the poems of Khalil Gibran and Jalalluddin Rumi so they could implement the concepts of love in their life in order to understand the comparison,
3.    to assist the readers in understanding the two famous poets that considered as the main poets of world literature through the concepts of love in their poems so the readers could more understand the literature work.


Reference
Arp, T.R. 2005. Perrine’s Sound and Sense: an Introduction to Poetry (11th ed.). USA: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Childs, Peter and Roger Fowler. 2006. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Rubin, Zick. 1970. Measurement Of Romantic Love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 16, No. 2, 265-273 Department of  Social Relations, Harvard university.

Bushrui, Suheil and Joe Jenkins. 2008. Kahlil Gibran Man and Poet A New Biography. Oxford: One World Publisher

Eydin, Emin. 2004. Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi. London: Dialog Society.